Why ISIS carried out terrorist attack in Mali under its new leader

Nahla Abdel Moneim

ISIS, aka Daesh, on Nov. 2 claimed responsibility for a devastating raid that killed 54 people in the north of Mali.

French military sources said a French soldier, named Ronan Pointeau, was killed in the attack.

The deadly terrorist operation was only hours after ISIS named a new leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, to be successor of succeed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed on October 26. Was it revenge or meant as a sign of the organization’s survival?

Mohamed Sadek Ismail, a researcher at the Arab Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said that the terrorist operation has a number of reflections.

“ISIS wants to prove its presence on the ground. It wants to show that it could carry out terrorist threats via lone wolves,” Ismail told THE REFERENCE.

“ISIS wants to prove its threats to global security, especially after it had lost many of its logistical and financial resources,” he said.

Ismail expects ISIS will escalate its terrorist attacks in the coming period in some countries to assert its presence.

According to a study by the Institute for Economics & Peace, Mali ranked 22^nd of the most impacted by terrorism among 138 countries.

A US State Department report said that Mali’s northern regions had suffered from escalating terrorist attacks in 2018.